Let Them Eat Cake, And So They Drank Blood
CZ
At some point under the yolk of civilization, either population increases beyond sustainability of the land, the land is mismanaged, or the climate changes and hunger becomes widespread. No longer appeased by worship or sacrifice, the gods rebel, the system fails, the people revolt and destroy it. Population crashes and the cycle begins anew.
Since all modern people labor under the misconception that the Earth is theirs to dominate, agriculture appears to be the only possible process to that end. Civilization arises when people band together to try and make the formula work. They institute rules and regulations of behavior creating social hierarchy to increase efficiency and productivity. Slaves are necessary to further the agenda of those in power. Technology is an outgrowth of this fear-based desire for power and control. As successive civilizations expand, mature and collapse, they become increasingly complex. Yet, the inherently unworkable cycle always repeats. Though they may last for thousands of years, ultimately civilizations always collapse.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Unknown
Slackers derive their energy from this pulsing mass of social bioplasm while quietly learning the skills necessary to survive the inevitable crash. Right now is the best time to adopt the Slacker lifestyle. While in any civilization an upper class and the waste it creates is often enough for a clever individual to subsist, our culture with its large, wasteful and destructive middle class offers the highest standard of living any Slacker could possibly want. But you better hurry; the middle class is dying. The Great Remission will soon begin. The peak of this civilization is already history.
Becoming a Slacker is as much about doing the right thing as it is about taking it easy. If you want to contribute to civilization, by all means strap on the harness, keep your shoulder to the wheel, whip those credit cards and spend most of your money on a house that’s too large, a car that’s unnecessary, food that’s unhealthful and medical care that is designed to make you sick rather than ensure your health. We Slackers need you. If everyone opted for the Slacker life, it wouldn’t work at all. Being a modern Slacker can only be accomplished in a decadent, civilized society.
Once civilization crashes the Slacker will have to adapt to different conditions. It therefore behooves the Slacker to use his time wisely to live closer to Nature and to learn her ways. Though civilization may last another hundred years, those who prepare for civilization’s ultimate demise will be more likely to survive.
If being a Slacker doesn’t appeal to you, just realize that some of the money you labor for is siphoned off for warfare and corporate welfare, a system that creates unrest and death in the world—maybe not in your world, but in places where the people don’t have the wherewithal to stop the powerful all-consuming civilization you support. In the Great Remission, the last to hop on the globalization bandwagon will be the first thrown under the wheels. They’ll blame you for disrupting their homelands and then pulling away the brass ring just before they could grab it. That makes you their enemy. Eventually all civilizations fall from decadence generated within and are dismantled from without by the impoverished and oppressed. Beware.
Another factor working against sustainability of the present system is the need for constant growth and increased energy consumption. Don’t think that technology will stop the fall. Technology will cause it. We’re already close to the edge. Ethanol is a scam. Hydrogen needs more power to produce than it releases when used. Nuclear power produces untenable waste. No other energy source can replace fossil fuels in our civilization, and they have turned the Earth into a simmering crock-pot. More energy isn’t the answer anyway. Power in the hands of mankind is the problem itself.
Industrialization and technology bring into existence nearly 6000 new chemical compounds every week, many of them poisonous. The toxic wastes of their production are disposed of by dumping them on the land, into the air and waterways or the oceans. Testing these chemicals for their effects on biosystems seldom happens. It’s an open experiment the results of which we are just beginning to feel.
The Earth and its resources is a finite, closed system. Already residents of the first world live far beyond what the planet could sustain if everyone alive lived at that level. And more people arrive every day.
Some believe that the oil supplies have already reached an apex and are on the decline. Even if they aren’t, we cannot keep pumping combustion gasses into the atmosphere indefinitely.
The proliferation of humanity and it’s irrational gluttony stresses biological ecosystems millions of years old, systems that support our crops, soils, oceans, forests and rivers. At some point, a seemingly insignificant key species will die off and an important ecosystem will fail. It’s happened before. When it happens again, the human species will experience a horrific and unprecedented die-off.
Genetic tinkering is prying the lid off Pandora’s box. We are in the throes of Earth’s fifth great planetary extinction cycle, the fourth being the death of the dinosaurs. Following every Great Extinction is a period of rapid evolutionary change triggered by the opening of newly vacated ecological niches. Artificial genetic manipulation contains the potential to foster an uncontrollable evolutionary explosion to replace lost diversity with new life forms. From a purely biological point of view, this is exciting and wonderful. For humanity however, a strong possibility exists that something else will either arise to compete for the niche now occupied by humans, or more likely, feast on the abundant human forage.
It’s the Rainbow, Stupid!
CZ
But don’t worry about it. It’s all good. Fat kids aren’t healthy. Bored housewives are big trouble. A life of convenience leads to an artery-clogged death. The wealthy use the most tranquilizers, go to the shrink most often and are the most miserable. Civilization wasn’t working anyway. In the end it never does.
Change is hard. You may still believe there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The Slacker would rather sit and admire the beauty of the rainbow than go looking for that gold. In the real world, gold is quite useless and has no value anyway.
Oh, and by the way, there is no pot of gold there. It’s the rainbow, stupid!
To be continued...
Image all mine
Preface part 1, part 2
Introduction
Why Slack? part 1, part 2
The Purpose of Life
Paradox of Civilization:part 1
I would say I am half a Slacker. Though the bandwidth seems to me to be a little more broad than what I got the impression from reading your Slackers Guide. Do you feel pain in the same amount as you feel pleasure from being a Slacker? I decided a while ago that I won't take the burden of civilization on my shoulder. Do what I can, help where it is needed. Consume with sanity.
Not many people are able to live slackerish or half- slacker wise. And like you said you depend on the other ones and they on you to mirror each other. This civilizations will die for sure. In one or another way. That's what happened to all of them. In the review they fascinate us. If there will be no humans left to be fascinated something else will appear. :)
If we seek happiness it will elude us. Those who seek the most comfort are the most uncomfortable. Being a Slacker is about doing the right thing, about waking up to truth, not about self fulfillment. That's why nobody but you appears to be interested. At first I was disappointed, but now I've rexposed myself this this wisdom, thanks to you.
Thank you.
What touches me is the simplicity and truth in those wise words.
Pictures speak through centuries. That is why language can better be used by picturing things instead of trying to communicate in an abstract way. I must say I am trying to lose the habit of the latter. But it's difficult.
Thank you for that.
hm.. I would think many people are interested. It depends on factors I cannot look through or argue with you. But I am sure, they are.
Words and pictures are necessary for communication between individuals and groups, but these symbolic representations are inaccurate and prone to misinterpretation. But they are all we have.
What the sages say is to not use words or pictures to communicate with yourself. That is what meditation does (and psychedelic drugs to some extent). Meditation seeks to stop the thought process while drugs scramble it beyond interpretation. One is active and is something to be learned and adopted. The other is passive and temporary but very revealing, a sideshow along the path.
I'm sure there is interest somewhere, but I doubt that a platform obsessed with financial gain is the place I'll find it. It's not the choir that I want to preach to, those already awakened. It's the alcoholics in the bar and the customers and prostitutes in the whore house that interest me. They are by far the majority, the ocean liner steaming toward the precipitous rim of the world that I'm trying to turn before its too late. I know it's foolish, but I have no motivation for anything else. This is what I'm supposed to do.
I guess I perceive it different - but again, I won't argue.
It seems you feel attracted to the special ones, who experienced pain. I don't know if they are the majority. Maybe yes, maybe no. ...
If this is what you are supposed to do I don't want to talk you out of it. In the meantime enjoy the time with us other steemians who give breaks from alcoholics, whores and insane or broken ones:) ... though everyone carries some part of painbody and brokenness within him or her.
You don't have to accept what I say. I'm interested in your perceptions. That is why I'm here. I realize that I'm way out there. Tell me what you think.
Everyone experiences pain. It's how we deal with the pain that is important. We can believe that the world needs perfecting in order to alleviate that pain, or we can accept that the world is perfect and accept and experience our pain as part of a path of spiritual growth.
Avoidance is aversion, the flip-side of desire, the Second Noble Truth. One path destroys the very planet on which we all live and the other does not. We aren't going to turn Earth into a paradise based on human desires. The Earth already is Paradise and we are part of it. All effort to make it better makes it worse. People used to adapt to the planet, live within its natural boundaries for millions of years. Now we try to make it fit some abstract idea of perfection. Man created God in his image, not the other way around.
If we believe we are this ego inside a body we will suffer and we will die. If we identify with that which brings the ego and the body into being we cannot die.
In an ultimate sense, none of this matters. Humans can continue to ignore their ignorance right up until their last gasp, be happy in their delusions, eat up the Earth the way a fungus shrivels an apple.
Consciousness will continue beyond the human form. Though it isn't important in any real sense, the path of pain Humanity travels is totally unnecessary. It's done because people don't know how to behave otherwise. It's done because of their social programming.
People are free to do what they will. I wouldn't have it otherwise. I just want people to make conscious decisions based on reality and not delusion. If they simply did that, the world would right itself and the Earth would heal.
Actually I am on the same path you are on.
In my daily profession I deal with people who suffer and/or need some other support like communicating with government and the officials. I am helping people to get along within what difficulties they are facing or do their share that problematic things happen to them.
In this I realize my own resistances when I want them to be okay again, when I try to push them to what I think is right. Being open minded (accepting) is one of the most challenging tasks I realize every day. Though it is the best practice I can imagine. Not avoiding situations where my inner judge comes into play is what saves me from becoming ignorant too much.
Through steemit - and other meetings - I am confronting myself with the noble truths, the causes for suffering. The stings I feel when I notice my envy. Then to accept that I do feel that way. Then let go of it. Then feel the release. Then view what else I have in my heart and mind, what is not envy.
From Buddhism I learned that there have to be three things to gain wisdom and awake eventually to reality. Buddha (as an ideal figure), Dharma (the teachings) and Sangha (spiritual buddies). I find it very useful and I am most thankful that this religion/philosophy/psychology is actually very much practicable and transferable to daily life. I am sure that studying the teachings for quite a while has already changed my life.
Your article was confronting me with pain. As to take care of me not letting myself being carried away by that, I used the term of not wanting to argue. Because - of course - I felt resistance to what you've said - thinking that I know it all and I am having enough of it for a liftetime (exploitation, destruction). I gave my wish up that humans should act as they are part of the earths organism - it caused me too much head/heartache and nothing good came out of it other than I was contagiously handing my pain over to the next one.
Sangha is something I do not practice. As I am not a member of a Buddhist center and there are actually no people in my circle with whom I can exchange what I learned or what I think about the teachings. Through writing communication it's quite time consuming:) So maybe I am ahead and searching for Sangha and where I can find refuge once in a while. Also, another part is missing in my journey, that is meditation. I did it only on occasion and don't dare to do it on a regular basis. But when doing my stuff consciously already counts as meditation, then I do :)